User manual

BD Estimator · PWD · LGED · RHD · BWDB

Two rows across the top. The upper row names the book and carries the chips that switch between them (PWD · LGED · RHD · BWDB, plus +2 ▾ for your own books), the zone, the remote-area setting, the appendix, the calculation tools, and ⋯ at the far right. The lower row holds five tabs, and that is where the work happens.

Down the left are the chapters with a count against each. ★ Favorites holds what you have starred; All items holds everything.

The ⋯ menu

Language (বাং / EN), 🔑 licence, 🌙 light or dark, 📖 the user manual, ✉ report a problem. All five live here so that the top row has room for the name of the book. User manual is this document — F1 opens it too, and it opens in a window of its own so you can keep it beside your work.

The four books belong to four departments and each divides the country its own way. PWD names its zones after divisions (Dhaka–Mymensingh, Chattogram–Sylhet and so on); LGED uses Zone-A, B, C. So the list of zones changes when you change book. That is not a fault — the books really do divide the country differently.

Choosing a zone

Use the Zone dropdown at the top. Every rate on screen changes at once, and your current estimate is recalculated at the new zone's rates.

Remote areas

Some books carry an uplift for inaccessible or hard-to-reach areas. Choose one in the Remote area dropdown and it is applied to the items where the book says it applies. Where it does not apply, leave Not a remote area.

The appendix

The Appendix dropdown holds the book's own tables — labour rates, material rates, percentage build-ups. This is where you go to see where a rate came from.

Hiding the basic rates

Tick Exclude basic rates (Man/Material) and the unit rates for labour and materials drop out of the list, leaving only the work items. It makes searching much quieter.

The book's rates cannot be edited, but the quantities, the parts, the rebate and the contingency are all yours.

Adding items

Press + at the right of an item in Schedule Items. To take several at once, tick the boxes on the left and add them from the bar that appears at the top.

Quantities

Type a number, or press Dimensions and let the app work it out from length × width × height. Using Dimensions also gives you the dimension breakdown when printing, which is what a checker asks for.

Shapes, and more than one to an item

The Shape / formula dropdown decides which formula is used — rectangular box, circular column, hollow pipe, triangular prism, trapezoidal prism. The field names change with it.

One item can hold more than one shape — rectangular and circular columns in the same building, say. Press Another shape and you get a second part with its own shape, its own rows and its own subtotal; the item's total is all of them added.

Each part can be named — “roof columns”, “ground floor”. Left empty it takes the shape's own name. Both the name and the subtotal appear in the printed dimension breakdown, so somebody else can follow it.

Overriding a rate

Rate lets you replace the book's figure. An overridden rate is marked on screen and stays marked on the printed sheet.

Upper-floor addition

For RCC and some other items the book carries an extra rate for upper floors. Press Upper-floor addition and choose the floor; the app applies the book's own rule. Do not also add it by hand — it would be counted twice.

Parts and chapters

On a large job, + New part separates Part-A from Part-B. The chapter dropdown under each item decides where it is grouped, and the printed sheet sub-totals by that grouping.

Rebate, contingency and the total

Saving

There are two ways to put an item on the estimate, and they are not the same thing:

There is nothing else to press. Everything is written to your own machine as you type. 💾 Save is a different thing — it writes the estimate out as a file — and named copies inside the app are what 📁 Project list is for. Chapter 11 sets out the difference.

Three questions get answered here: what the same work costs in a different book, what it costs in a different zone, and what the whole estimate would come to at another book's rates.

Three ways in

• ⇄ Compare rates across schedules (above the item list) — search by name or code and pick an item from the results; the app looks for its partner in every other book and sets it alongside. Or pick a job from the list underneath — those codes were matched by hand, so they are the most reliable starting points.
• Press ⇄ beside an item to put it on the comparison list, then Show comparison in the bar at the bottom. This way you choose exactly which items stand side by side.
• ⇄ This estimate at other schedules' rates in the estimate's summary — the whole estimate at once (its own section below).

Area and zone

The books do not divide the country the same way — LGED's zone C is Rajshahi while PWD's third zone is Khulna, and RHD has five zones. So a comparison asks for an area (Rajshahi, say), not a zone number, and each book is priced at its own zone for that area. The zones used are named under the table. BWDB's zones name no division, so the zone you already chose for BWDB is used and marked ⚠.

The base column

Everything is measured against the column marked base, in taka and per cent (to two decimals). Press another column heading and the base moves there.

The marks

Descriptions side by side, and confirming a pair

Press any rate in the table and both items' full descriptions (headings included) open side by side underneath. Words one side has and the other lacks are marked in yellow, so a wrong pair shows at a glance. From there:

• This is the pair — the app's guess is confirmed and marked ✓.
• Not this — remove — the pair goes, and never comes back.
• Withdraw confirmation — a confirmed pair goes back to being a guess.

Your decisions are kept by the app — for every estimate, not only this one. Where a book has no partner the table says No partner found; press Pick in RHD to search that book and choose one yourself.

One book, several items

Pick several items from a single book and the items become the columns, the first one the base — how much more the 400 mm tile is than the 300 mm one, for instance.

By zone

Show by zone turns the zones into rows and measures each against your own zone, marked ★. With several books in the table the rows become areas — each book at its own zone for that area, and divisions that fall in the same zone in every book share a row.

For PWD items (and LGED items taken from PWD) an Analysis row carries a ⌗ Why different button — it opens the rate analysis on the inputs that make the difference (Chapter 05).

Buttons under the table, and Excel

Under the table each item's code is a button — press it to add the item to the estimate (it shows ✓), press again to take it out. ⬇ Excel gives three sheets: Comparison (the base rate, the difference and the per cent as formulas — change a rate and the differences follow), All zones (every zone's rate of every item) and Source (which pairs the book states, which are guesses, and the full descriptions).

The whole estimate at other books' rates

⇄ This estimate at other schedules' rates in the estimate's summary. Every item's partner is looked for in every book (in the same order as above) and priced as quantity × that book's rate.

• Cards — each book's total, how many items were priced (4/5, say), how many are guesses, and on the items both share, how much more or less than the base in taka and per cent.
• Base — change it from the list at the top, a card, or a column heading. It starts as the book most of the estimate comes from.
• ৳ Taka / % against the base — every cell carries both the taka change and the per cent; the second button brings the per cent to the front.
• Press any rate to see the estimate's item and its partner side by side, with This is the pair / Not this right there. The ⇄ beside an item's code opens that item's full comparison; come back and the totals follow your decisions.
• Excel — taka = quantity × unit factor × rate, and each book's "vs base (Tk)" and "vs base %" — all as formulas; plus a "Source" sheet.

The schedule says 10,577 taka. How many bags of cement is that, how many bricks, how many mason-days? Until now you opened the back of the book or rebuilt it in Excel. Now the ⌗ button beside the item opens the whole working.

The button is on the item list and on estimate rows. Items the book gives no analysis for do not carry it.

What you see

The item number and the zone switch at the top. Then the component lines — description, quantity, unit, rate, amount. Below them the contractor's profit, overhead, VAT with its adjustment factor, and the rate per unit.

Under that, Where the money sits — how much of the rate, in taka and per cent, goes to each head: materials (blue), labour (red), plant and fuel (green), profit-overhead-VAT (grey). A line built from a breakdown is split by what its own rows are.

Breakdown

Where a line offers ▸ Breakdown, press it — the inner calculation opens in the same table. Brick, sand and cement inside the concrete; mason, mixer and vibrator inside the labour. Those rates can be changed too.

The check

Every analysis is recalculated and checked against the rate the book prints.

• matches — the analysis returns to the printed rate.
• differs · 47 taka — a small gap, stated underneath.

Your own rates

On one line — click the rate. You will be asked:

• Everywhere — every analysis that uses this rate moves.
• This line only — nothing else changes.

All at once — Basic rate list at the foot of the panel. Search by name among 2,210 rates and type a new price. Change cement once and it reaches every analysis. Press What changed to list only what you have edited.

Once you set your own rates the badge reads Your rate, and Where the money sits shows the book's rates beside yours — what each head gained, and what it does to the rate you quote.

Rate sets

To work from one set of prices across an office use Export rate set; it writes a .rateset file. Import rate set applies it on another machine. The file carries the name of each rate beside its price, so if the schedule is updated and a row moves, the import says so rather than applying a wrong price silently.

Why the rate differs in another zone

Near the foot of the panel. Pick a zone (Rajshahi, say) and it shows both rates, then which material or labour prices differ and how much each moves the item's rate, with profit, overhead and VAT, largest first. 07.1.1 is 264 taka cheaper in Rajshahi than in Dhaka — 170 of it from the price of bricks alone (13,000 → 12,500 per thousand). The parts add up to the difference.

Where you have set your own rates, those are used. The ⌗ Why different button in the comparison's zone table lands here too (Chapter 04).

Print and Excel

Print prints the analysis sheet alone, not the rest of the app. Excel gives an .xlsx with real formulas: amount = quantity × rate ÷ divisor, sub-totals by SUM, profit, overhead and VAT percentages and the adjustment factor in cells of their own. Breakdown rows sit under their line, and the line is their sum — change any rate and the whole sheet follows. The printed rate and the difference are there too. CSV gives the same figures without formulas.

What each item shows

"Rate only" is not a gap. An added rate for one more floor, or a laboratory testing fee, is set by the schedule directly — there is no material build-up behind it.

The other books

Rate analysis is for the PWD schedule. LGED items the book records as taken from PWD (1,758 of them) carry the button too — the panel says which PWD item it came from and shows both books' printed rates. It opens on PWD's zone for the same division (LGED's zone C is Rajshahi, so PWD's Rajshahi zone — not PWD's third). The estimate uses LGED's own printed rate. RHD and BWDB have no analysis.

Measurements in, quantities out. Open it from Calculation tools → 🏗 Quantity Take-off.

Adding an element

Pick a family from the row at the top — Substructure, Superstructure, Masonry & Finishes, Earthwork, Bridge, Road — then an element, and its own fields appear. A job can hold as many elements as it needs; 📊 Summary adds them up.

Brief or detailed

Tick Detailed (full BBS) to switch. Brief is enough for a preliminary figure; detailed is what you attach to a tender.

For bars counted individually (main bars) give the number; for mesh and stirrups give the spacing in mm.

Lap, cover and wastage

• Lap length — already inside the bar length.
• Clear cover — deducted to get the effective length.
• Wastage (%) — cutting loss only.

Into the estimate

📊 Summary groups every element's concrete, shuttering and steel by head, and one press puts them into the estimate. An item placed this way carries a 🔗; change the measurements and put them in again and the existing figure is updated rather than a second row added.

Units

Measurements in metres, diameters in millimetres; results in cum for concrete, sqm for shuttering, kg for steel.

Five small tools, under Calculation tools at the top.

▭ Opening deduction

The first table is what is added (walls, floors); the second is what is taken out (doors, windows). Each row takes a number, a width or length, and a height. The Net area follows underneath, and giving a thickness works out the volume as well.

This is what you use for plaster, paint or masonry — anywhere the openings have to come out.

◍ Mortar / concrete materials

Choose a mix, give the wet volume in cum, and you get cement (in bags), sand, and chips or stone. The mixes are Concrete 1:1.5:3, 1:2:4 and 1:3:6, and Mortar 1:4, 1:6 and 1:3.

A separate field below turns a masonry volume into a number of bricks — roughly 500 per cum, mortar included.

⛰ Earthwork by chainage

Each row takes a chainage and the cut and fill areas in m². Give the mid-section area Aₘ and that segment uses the prismoidal rule; leave it blank and it uses average end area.

Bulking (cut) — excavated soil swells, so the loose volume is larger. Shrinkage (fill) — fill compacts, so more soil is needed. Both in per cent.

Below: cut and fill per segment, then the totals, then a running balance. Add cut to estimate and Add fill to estimate are separate buttons.

⬚ Tiles & paint

Area, tile width and length in mm, and wastage per cent give the number of tiles, along with the area of a single tile.

The paint section below takes an area, a number of coats and a coverage in sqm per litre, and returns litres.

🖩 Calculator

One expression at a time — + − * / ^ √ ( ) %, plus π, e and ans for the previous result. Enter keeps the result on the tape below; press any line on the tape to reuse its value.

What a building will cost before there is a detailed architectural or structural design, worked from Annexure-A and Annexure-B of PWD SoR 2022 (Revised). This is the figure that goes on a project approval and a request for funds.

What counts as plinth area

The book's definition: the area bounded by the outer perimeter of a floor, or by the lines joining the outer faces of the columns — including any area left open, except a courtyard open to the sky.

Building category

A category has to be settled before any rate applies — Standard, Super or Special. The book's guide: Standard means general basic facilities, finishing mostly in local materials — brick, sand, cement and lime — but a hygienic finish in toilets, lavatory and kitchen. For office buildings the Special category is decided by the Chief Engineer, PWD and the Chief Architect.

What you supply

Two buttons go beyond that. Add an item from the chart covers boundary walls, gates, barbed wire, roads, drains and semi-permanent structures, all at the book's rates. Add a manual head covers external water supply, external electrification, lifts, STP and culverts — for which the book prints no rate at all but the instruction “estimate to be prepared on the basis of requirements”, so the amount is yours to enter.

The four tables

Table-3 is always added to Table-2 — it is printed across the head of the table in the book, and the app does it for you. Table-3 is read down the “Storey Designed For” column, meaning the total number of storeys the building is designed for.

The book's rules the app applies for you

The build-up on the right

It follows Annexure-B's format exactly:

Q and R+S can both be changed. They start at Q = 1% and R+S = 5%, which is what the book's own worked example uses.

Built under own management

Tick built under own management (−22.383%) and that percentage comes off the grand total. Annexure-B's rule: a structure built by the department itself or by a private owner carries no contractor's profit, overhead, VAT or price escalation.

Seeing the source tables

Open View the source tables — TABLE-1 to TABLE-4 and the book's four tables appear as printed, with the cell used in this calculation marked. That is how you check a figure rather than take it on trust — and since a preliminary estimate goes on paper for approval, it is not the step to skip.

Saving and printing

PLAR has its own 💾 Save and 📂 Open, working like the estimate's: a .json file written to your computer and read back. Print / PDF lays the sheet out in Annexure-B's format; CSV is for taking the figures elsewhere.

Where a BoQ somebody sent you gets set against the book. The question is usually the same one — is the rate quoted the rate the book prints? It earns its keep checking tenders, checking bills, and going over an estimate a consultant has sent in.

Two ways in

• 📊 From Excel / CSV — open the file. If the workbook has several sheets, the app asks which one to read.
• Paste — copy the table straight out of Excel or Word. For the untidy tables that come out of a PDF this is the easier route.

A header row is fine, and nothing enters your estimate by itself.

The grid is editable

Real BoQs do not arrive clean — rows break, a description spreads over two columns, blank rows sit in the middle. So the table can be repaired in place:

Mapping the columns

Which column holds the description, which the unit, the quantity, the rate. The app guesses and you correct it. The description column is required — matching will not start without it.

Matching the items

For each row the app offers candidates from the book. Pick the right one, or leave it. Once matched, the book's rate sits alongside the quoted one.

When the units differ

If the BoQ is in cft and the book in cum, the app converts — but it keeps the original quantity and unit in view (← 250 cft), so you can see for yourself whether the conversion is right.

Three tools on every row

If your organisation keeps its own rates, they can sit here as a book of their own — up to six. They appear beside the government books, search the same way, and can be used in an estimate.

Creating one

Own SoR tab → bring it in from Excel, or type it. You map the columns: code, description, unit, rate.

Three sub-tabs

Comparing versions

With two or more of your own books, a Compare versions button appears — 2025 against 2026, say. Matching is by code and nothing is guessed, so the same job has to carry the same code in both lists. The result comes in four parts: rate changed · new · dropped · unit changed.

Down the right of the estimate page, under the summary.

Every Excel file the app writes — estimate, comparison, estimate at other books' rates, rate analysis — comes out in the language the app is in. Codes, numbers and the books' own item text are left as they are.

The preview

Any Print button opens the sheet in a window of its own with a slim toolbar across the top. The Windows print dialog does not appear yet — look first, then print.

Print brings up the Windows dialog; print or cancel, and the preview window closes either way. Your settings are remembered, and they belong to the program rather than to a book, so switching books does not change them.

PDF

The PDF button in the preview writes exactly what would have gone on paper and asks where to keep it. The footer carries your Ref ID on the left and 3 / 7 on the right.

Excel

The Excel file is not a list of dead numbers — the formulas are in it. Change a quantity and the amount, the category subtotal, the grand total, the rebate and the contingency all follow.

• One tab per Part.
• Money as #,##0.00, quantities as #,##0.###.
• An AutoFilter on the header row, to pull out one category.
• Print area and margins set, so it prints from Excel as it stands.

CSV

A light file that opens anywhere. Category names come out in whichever language the program is in. Both CSV and Excel honour the Part selector beside Print.

What goes at the head of the sheet

Project name, Ref/EID, agency, zone and date — fill these in at the top of the estimate page and they appear on the printed sheet, along with the letterhead line.

The estimate you are working on is kept automatically; there is nothing to press. Keeping several jobs side by side is what the named saves are for — and there are two different ways to do it, which are not the same thing.

Templates

If the same kind of job comes round often — much the same list of items in every residential building — building the list once saves doing it again.

• Only the current part is saved, not the whole estimate.
• Only schedule items — rows you typed in by hand do not travel.
• Applying one drops the items into the current part at quantity 1; the quantities are still yours to enter. Items already present are not added twice.

A file from another book

All of it stays on your machine

Projects, templates, your own rate lists — none of it goes to a server. To open the folder, use Help → Where are my files? in the menu bar at the top of the window. To back it up, copy that folder.

The trial

Fourteen days of the whole program after installing — no key, no card, no registration. When it ends nothing you made is lost: you can still open and print, only editing stops.

Buying

⋯ → 🔑 Licence → I've paid. Give the plan, the term, your name, phone and the bKash TrxID; the app shows you the amount to send. The moment you submit it, the app runs in full for 48 hours, and the licence is made permanent within that time.

If you already have a key, put it under I have a key and press Activate.

How many machines

Two on Personal, seven on Official. If you change computer the old one can be released — write to support@bdestimator.com.

Working offline

The program runs offline, but the licence needs checking now and then. If it goes thirty days without once reaching the internet it becomes read-only; one connection puts it right.

Updates

Shortly after opening, the app looks for a new version — not more than once a day. If there is one it asks; it will not download without your say-so. With no internet it says nothing at all. To look yourself, use Help → Check for updates in the menu bar at the top of the window.

A new edition of a book within your term costs nothing extra.